Burned: Black Cipher Files #3 (Black Cipher Files series) (16 page)

“Even if you had known that Stanley was the assassin could you have done anything?” Zeke asked.

“It would have been very tricky.” Carson mulled over the implications. The federal government had paid John Stanley to assassinate Sunshine’s grandparents. That could not have come out.

Zeke thought about the entire situation. “Have you known where they were this whole time?”

“No. We purposely set it up so that I wouldn’t know their exact whereabouts. However I could get a message to them if I ever needed to.” Carson confirmed. “Until two days ago, I hadn’t had any contact with Stella since their last move. And they’ve been safe.”

Two days ago? “Well they aren’t safe anymore.”

“He found them?”

“He got to Cambria. They split up but he found Sunshine in San Luis Obispo this afternoon.”

“That is not good news.”

“What if he can lead us to who gave the orders?” Zeke asked quietly, and hoped that Sunshine was still on the bed meditating and not attempting to listen to his conversation.

“We already know that I gave them.”

“But don’t you think he has to be connected in some way if he was able to marry Sunshine’s mother and still be in place as the sleeper?”

“It’s definitely against protocol.”

“Sunshine says he’s obsessed with her mother,” Zeke said.

“’Sunshine says’?”

Shit. “You wanted me to keep an eye on her.”

“I didn’t expect you to actually interact with her.”

“Yeah, well, sometimes plans go sideways.”

There was silence on the other end of the line while Carson digested Zeke’s revelation. “She okay?”

Zeke heard the concern and the affection in Carson’s question.

“Right now, she’s dealing,” Zeke answered. “But she’s been in hiding and on the run for years. She’s worn down.”

Zeke might not have been on the run but the threat of prison had been hanging over him for a long time. Always there hovering in the back of his mind that if he screwed up, his life could be taken away from him. Sunshine’s life had been taken away. And she hadn’t even done anything wrong. He wondered how she had managed to deal with that stress and without the outlet of a job she loved.

Zeke thought about how her face lit up when she talked scientific laws. She’d mentioned Cal Poly but Zeke hadn’t found any evidence that she’d actually been enrolled in college. What a waste.

“So why are you calling me?” Carson interrupted his musings.

Trust Carson to bottom line it. “Can you get me information on him? Whereabouts? Cell tracking? Anything? She and her mother have split up to keep him off balance. But I’m wondering if we’re going to have to bait traps to keep him from Stella.”

“I’ll get you the information as soon as possible.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

“Keep Sunshine safe,” Carson commanded.

“That’s my plan.” Zeke hesitated, wondering if he should tell Carson about his other discovery.

Carson sighed. “Spit it out.”

“I may have run into Susan Chen.”

“What?!”

Zeke jerked his head back from the phone. He’d never heard Carson raise his voice.

“I had to make a choice.” Zeke refused to be defensive but he also wanted to explain. “Her or Sunshine. And at that moment, Sunshine was in more danger than Chen. Stanley found Sunshine.”

He mentally kicked himself, he should have called Carson right away. Obviously it had only been a few hours ago, but if he’d been thinking, he should have alerted Carson to Chen’s presence in SLO. Crap. “I guess Jamie didn’t call you.”

His emphasis had been on getting Sunshine to safety, and after he’d made the call to Jamie, he’d shoved the other woman from his mind.

“We need to find her.” Carson grumbled. “She escaped from a maximum security facility. She’s got answers we need.”

“She’s in California somewhere.”

“You need to stay away from her until we can capture her and interrogate her,” Carson said grimly.

Zeke was well aware that if Susan Chen were captured with his card on her, it wouldn’t look good for him. He debated whether to reveal what he’d done or keep it to himself, but in the end he figured he’d better come clean.

“Yeah, about that.”

“Jesus, Hawthorne, what now?”

“I may have given her my card.”

Zeke could practically see Carson drop his head into his free hand.

“Okay. Okay. It’s good that you told me,” Carson said. “Full disclosure. But you need to know that I may not be able to protect you if we apprehend her with evidence that you’ve been in contact and shit hits the fan.”

Zeke flinched. He really hadn’t thought his actions through. He’d been too anxious to get to Sunshine. He was a programmer, looking for patterns, searching for answers. He didn’t automatically think like a covert agent. Which might just be his fucking downfall. And he definitely hadn’t been thinking like a covert agent when he’d made contact with Sunshine and then followed her to SLO. He’d been thinking like a guy.

“Did she say anything?”

“No. She was terrified of me.” Zeke frowned. If only he’d had the time to talk to her, get some information from her. Just a little before he’d had to go after Sunshine. But it was too late now. And he wasn’t sorry he’d made the choice he had.

“Okay.” Carson said, “I’ll see what I can dig up on John Stanley and get back to you.”

“I appreciate it.”

“Just keep our girl safe.”

Our
girl. If only.

Zeke clicked the off button and turned to see Sunshine standing in the doorway to the hotel room. He hadn’t heard the door open. Hadn’t heard her at all. Jeez, he sucked at the covert stuff.

There were so many ways this conversation could go bad.

And then she asked, “What did Susan Chen do?”

Twenty-One

I watched Zeke mouth the word, “shit,” and then tuck his phone into his Hawaiian hibiscus board shorts pocket. I had to wonder if he was going to lie to me.

Probably.

He closed his eyes, and tilted his head back. Then he squared his shoulders, shifted his head so that he looked straight at me with bleak resignation. “I can’t tell you.”

Well, it wasn’t quite a lie but it certainly wasn’t an answer either.

I probably should have asked more questions earlier but between my freak out and his tension and I’d reacted instead of analyzed.

“Time for me to go.” I blurted without thinking, reacting again. More secrets. More lies. I couldn’t take it. My stress level rose and the last twenty minutes of meditation went out the window.

He looked so discouraged, I almost backed down. But then I thought about my life. If I was truly going to take charge, I needed to actually ‘take charge’.

The truth was, I didn’t want to leave, I wanted him to give me a reason to stay.

His entire body vibrated with intensity, with unspoken need, some unspoken tension. “Go inside.” Zeke waved his arm at the interior of the hotel room. “Fuck it.”

Okay. Finally. I went back into the hotel room. Zeke followed closely behind me.

The door swung closed with an ominous thunk.

Zeke gestured to the bed. “Have a seat.”

And he proceeded to tell me a crazy tale of abduction, experimental DNA-enhancing drugs, antidotes, suspensions, and prison escape.

I wanted to get it right. And let’s face it, the story he just shared was so fantastical that I had to clarify. “So you were illegally injected with some sort of genetic enhancement drug, abducted, had your encryption program stolen, and illegally injected again with an antidote. All by this Susan Chen?”

“Yep.” Zeke nodded. “And an accomplice.”

“When she was caught, you were suspended because you ‘gave’ her the encryption program, and then she escaped from a highly secure federal prison.”

“Yep.”

“Except you don’t remember giving her the program.”

“Yep.”

“And that was the Asian woman in
Le Bistrôt Légume
earlier.”

“Yep.”

“But you didn’t apprehend her…you came after me.”

That was the part I really didn’t get. This woman held the key to clearing his name. Because only she could corroborate that he hadn’t colluded with the bad guys and that his sharing of his program was because he was under the influence of Sodium Pentothal.

“Yep.”

I remembered what he said earlier, but really I had to ask another time. After all, insane weird attraction was no reason not to save himself. “Why?”

He just looked steadily at me. “You really want me to say it again?”

My heart thudded painfully in my chest as the implications of what he was saying, or really what he wasn’t saying, penetrated. I was smart, a genius really. He didn’t actually think I would buy what he wasn’t saying.

Because of
me
, because I was in imminent danger from my stepfather, he hadn’t chased after the woman who had the power to clear him. A woman who is supposedly a fugitive from the federal government and who is the subject of a huge,
quiet
manhunt by the NSA.

“Really?” I resisted the urge to roll my eyes but it was close.

How dumb did he think I was? Like most people, he catalogued my ultra-feminine skirt, the loosely crocheted sweater, and the new age potions and concoctions in Scents of the Sea, and assumed I was some free-spirited flower child chasing moonbeams and butterflies without a concrete, intelligent thought in my head. I’d thought someone that smart would be able to see beneath the surface to me.

“Believe what you want.” Zeke shrugged as if he didn’t care, but an odd vulnerability flashed over his face as he cut his gaze to the bland watercolor over the Formica desk. “But for inexplicable reasons, I seem to be compelled to help you whether you want it or not. And you were terrified of John Stanley.”

A feeling of warmth, of sweetness, spread through me. I wanted to believe him, I really did. But I’d been cynical and distrustful since my seventh birthday because of my stepfather. And truly, because of his obsession with my mother, he was the poster child for unhealthy attraction. Fortunately, Zeke wasn’t giving off a creepy stalker vibe. But thirteen years of abject cynicism couldn’t be eradicated in one simple day.

“Besides, I have my orders,” Zeke said.

“Orders?” I’d believe that over some completely illogical and badly-timed attraction.

He sidestepped my true question quite neatly. “Your mother asked me to look out for you.”

And that quickly my animosity deflated. Mama would have thought I needed someone to look after me. She’d needed someone her whole life, even if she didn’t really recognize that I had been taking care of her for years. I didn’t need someone to take care of me. And he may have blithely ignored the question but I knew he wasn’t talking about my mother’s request.

“I don’t understand why you would have orders to keep me safe.” I shook my head trying to reason out why anyone in the NSA would care about a pair of women with no ties to anything illegal or even of national security. The idea was preposterous.

Zeke pressed his lips together. And didn’t say a word.

“You aren’t going to tell me,” I said flatly. Unfortunately I couldn’t seem to keep the disappointment out of my voice and I could feel my heartbeat slow as I understood he was done sharing. There had to be more to this situation than my mother and I and a crazy ex-stepfather. Zeke worked for the NSA for Goddess’s sake.

National Security Agency.

There was no way that the NSA would concern themselves with our little dysfunctional, violent triangle. And I couldn’t figure out why it had taken me so long to clue in to that fact.

What were the odds that Susan Chen was here, in San Luis Obispo where Zeke was, where I was, where John Stanley was? When I thought about that I was even more bewildered.

How was it all connected? And why?

It was a puzzle that needed brain power and more information. But before I could delve into an analysis of the seemingly disconnected items and events, he interrupted.

“So what’s it going to be?” Zeke raised an eyebrow. He was attempting to be casual, but I could feel his tension even from across the room. He really did want me to stay.

He was giving me the power. The decision. Giving me the choice. Rather than telling me what to do. I wanted to say I was leaving. Getting the heck out, but the reality was, I didn’t want to go too far from home until I reconnected with my mother and Blue. And I could use a decent nights’ sleep.

At the end of the day, I needed a place to stay and he was offering. So I crossed my arms over my chest, and gave him the most vacuous smile I could while I calculated the best odds for staying ahead of my killer stepfather.

Because no matter what Zeke Hawthorne said, John Stanley was the threat to me, to my mother. But he shouldn’t be able to track us from Zeke’s license plate that quickly, which meant I would be safe for tonight.

“I’ll stay.”

His relief was unmistakable.

I eyed him as he rubbed his palms over his board shorts. “What would you have done if I’d said I was leaving?” My curiosity got the better of me.

“I’d have followed you to make sure you were safe,” Zeke replied emphatically.

A strange warmth settled in my belly. I was so used to taking care of myself that it had never occurred to me that anyone else would do the honors.

“Oh.” I smiled, it was tentative, hesitant, a peace offering and an invitation all at once. I couldn’t help my soft reply. “Thanks.”

“My pleasure.”

Pleasure. And just like that the elephant was back in the room. I thought about those kisses. I thought about him lying between my legs. Solid and masculine. Not even twenty-four hours ago. Was it only last night?

Then I thought about how much I’d missed out on in my life.

I was tired of missing out.

I remembered last night on the beach, before the terror, after I’d pulled him from the sea like my own personal watery treasure. He was my spoils and I was going to seize this moment like a true pirate.

Zeke Hawthorne wasn’t going to know what hit him.

Twenty-Two

“Whatever you’re thinking is not a good idea,” he said almost desperately. But I was pretty sure the same thoughts had crossed his mind too.